


Remember, You Are Dead

by ishouldwritethatdown



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Injury Recovery, POV Second Person, Post-Legacy (comic), Temporary Amnesia, please give 2nd person POV a chance i promise i'm using it well
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-25
Updated: 2019-02-25
Packaged: 2019-11-05 05:50:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17912972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishouldwritethatdown/pseuds/ishouldwritethatdown
Summary: When she failed the people who relied on her, Ana Amari became a ghost. As far as her family knew, she was dead, and to her that means she's dead to herself, too. But ghosts can still fight for what they believe in - they can still protect the people who need it, as long as they can remember the way.





	Remember, You Are Dead

**Author's Note:**

> Bastet gave me a lot of feelings. So does Ana in general. Reeha, please write your mother back. She loves you.

The first thing you feel is danger.

It presses into you from the pale yellow walls, the unwavering lights, the sheets tucked tight around your legs.

You are told by a woman in a white coat that you are safe.

“I’m Dr. Lee,” she says. You don’t trust her.

You fight against the tubes and needles and when hands come to pin you down you yell and swear and cry and the lights dim until there’s darkness.

The first thing you feel is danger.

It pushes into the room with the bright daylight and arrives in a white coat.

“Good afternoon. I’m Dr. Lee,” the white coat says, “You’re safe now.” You don’t trust her, but you tell her that there is danger. You make her aware of your awareness, make her aware that you are ready for it, that you are ready to pull out the tubes and escape the sheets and fight it. The woman repeats that you are safe and you don’t trust her.

She comes closer and speaks you to and her hands extend to reach for something and you grab onto her wrist, grab hard and _press_ until your knuckles pale. You pull and stare and tell her there is danger, you are in danger, you are _all_ in danger, and they cannot be allowed to find you.

You do not remember who they are. You do not remember who you are.

The woman in the white coat tells you that you are safe. You do not trust her, but she asks gently that you let go of her wrist and you do. She tells you that no one knows you are here. She tells you that you are here under a false name while you recover – that you have been here for weeks. She tells you she knows about the danger, and that she will be back soon.

The room is empty and confusing, but you prefer that to the danger you feel when a stranger enters.

“It’s Dr. Lee,” she says. “Hello, again.”

You do not know her. You demand to know where you are.

“You are in a hospital in Warsaw. You’ve been recovering for several weeks. You’re safe now.” The woman holds out a photo of two people, an adult and a child with their arms outstretched, smiling. “Do you know who this is?” she asks.

“Who are you?” you ask.

“I’m Dr. Lee.”

You swim in questions from strangers in white coats who come and go. You tell them about the danger, danger, _danger_ , and they tell you that you are safe. They ask you questions and you struggle to stay above them, to not drown in them. You try to stay awake. You try to fight your weariness, keep your eyes open – you feel the cotton pad over your right eye under your fingertips.

You feel confused, and it makes you angry. You notice bruises under the sleeves of a white coat and ask what happened. You remind Dr. Lee about the danger. She tells you that you are safe.

Someone has placed a photo on the tray in front of you, and you light up with recognition. “Oh, ḥabībti,” you say fondly. You smile at the frozen image of your daughter’s happiness, and hope she knows to stay hidden from the danger. You wish it was safe so that you could see her smile come to life.

Dr. Lee helps you remember. She comes with pieces of paper printed from the hospital computers, flimsy photographs of faces that feel like home. You surround the bed with the pictures so that you can rest among friends, and when their names slip from your memory you work to bring them back with something else.

There is a young man dressed in too much black who can shoot a fly off a bottlecap. A showoff with a bad back who let her Fareeha sit atop his shoulders for much longer than he should have. A man who soaks the spotlight in every photo and – though his face was not among them – his other half who ducks from view.

There is paper and pen in front of you, and someone has written messages in shaky, awkward letters that you can’t parse out. Dr. Lee asks how your writing is coming along and you frown. You tell her that the person who left the note has terrible handwriting. Dr. Lee asks if you can write neater than them.

You are told that your injury gave you traumatic amnesia. You have been here, in this Warsaw hospital, for several weeks, recovering and asking the same questions. She tells you it would be easier if your family was here. You look at the photos arranged around you and tell her that it’s impossible.

Your handwriting improves, but you have to write slowly. It’s tedious, and it makes you angry. Dr. Lee tells you to be patient with yourself – the neural pathways to your old skills have been severed, and it will take time to rebuild them. She asks you to be as patient as you would be with Fareeha. You don’t remember telling her about Fareeha, but you trust that you did. You tell her that she didn’t see how you taught judo, and she laughs.

Walking is arduous and even more frustrating than writing. You have seen people go through therapy like this before – you remember. You did not understand how it felt then, to find something so thoughtless so difficult. You have to learn how to move every muscle again, affording each step concentration like nothing else. You have to remember how to stand, idle.

You remember when Fareeha was a baby and she delighted in every step she took, each one a triumph mightier than the last. You try to bring that joy to your own movement, but you can’t. Anger closes around your chest and you breathe long and deep.

You remember instead how you taught Jesse to shoot. He was always a crack shot on the range, but in the field he too often flashed with rage and impulsivity, and it cost him. You showed him how to keep a steady hand and steady breath. Gabriel had joked that you made breathing into a drill exercise, but he’d glowed with pride and gratefulness seeing how Jesse’s temperament changed.

Every step you take makes the pathways in your brain more trodden-down until they’re clear again, familiar. Dr. Lee tells you how impressed she is with your recovery over the last two months. She asks you if you want a fitting for an eye to replace the one you lost, and you tell her no with haste that you don’t quite understand.

As soon as you are able, you leave the hospital. Dr. Lee makes you promise to come in for a check-up soon although you have no intention of returning. You find the site of your last mission from the old news reports of the destruction and trace your footsteps as best as you can. The shattered scope of your rifle doesn’t give you the answers you were hoping for, but you know everything you need to; you know that you hesitated.

You take out the photograph of your daughter and her mother. The woman in the photo is not you; she is a phantom. Fareeha believes that Captain Amari is dead, and she is. You cannot return to the life you left behind. You cannot start a new one.

That single hesitation changed you.

You learn about the collapse of Overwatch. The deaths of your two best friends, the disgrace of every other member of your family. You almost make a joke about it – a few months without you and the whole organisation falls apart. But you don’t. Because no one is here to listen, and because this was a long time coming, and because you can’t separate your grief-stricken denial from your faith in Jack and Gabriel’s ability to survive.

You cannot return to your old life, but it is enough, you think, to live quietly in Cairo. You can live peacefully, in tandem to your daughter without ever burdening her with the truth. Without endangering the little family you have left.

You don’t last long. The more you see of your home, the more you see the havoc that Overwatch wreaked on it. The more responsibility you feel for your part in the chaos, for the skills you aren’t putting to use.

So you steal a prototype of a biotic rifle from a lockup of Overwatch contraband. You build yourself a mask that scopes almost as well as your cybernetic eye once did, and you drill yourself in breathing, in steady hands and surefooted steps and measured pulling of the trigger. You don’t hesitate – you strike at the broken bits of your city until people start to take notice. People whisper about the phantom that has appeared in Cairo – the Shrike.

You sit down at a desk in a cheap hotel that won’t ask questions. You position the photo frame so that you can see it in the corner of your remaining eye as you face forward, and remember Sam’s smile from behind the camera. You remember the world that the photo keeps frozen.

You write a letter to your daughter, and the handwriting almost looks like yours.


End file.
